Data Management Evolution: From Relational to Decentralized Systems

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, data reigns supreme. From the early days of relational databases to the era of big data and cloud computing, the evolution of data systems has been a remarkable journey. However, as technology advances and data volumes soar, traditional data infrastructures face new challenges. 

Over the course of decades, applications, tools, and services have grown more complex, and, as a result, the amount of data utilized has grown exponentially. On one hand, these advancements have increased the quality of web-based products and services; but on the other? The disproportionate growth of entangled protocols based on increasingly outdated infrastructure hinders the online experience that took decades to shape and refine.

This issue is further exacerbated by the rise of AI and AI-based applications, which are computer-intensive and consequently very taxing on many different levels. In fact, it is estimated that roughly 90% of all data was generated in the last two years alone, and at current rates, the global data size is estimated to grow by about 100% annually.

These figures are concerning; whereas the demand for data is increasing on multiple fronts, the same cannot be said about the infrastructure that powers it—at least not without certain nuances. Without a viable solution on the horizon, the everyday user will have to accept numerous compromises to maintain a similar – yet declining – quality of online life.

Enter Cere Network, a standout innovator leading the charge in data management and infrastructure after studying data growth and consumption trends for years and anticipating today’s predicament.

‍

Evolution of Data Systems

Decades ago, relational databases and SQL revolutionized data management. Oracle led the charge, laying the foundation for modern data practices. Since then, subsequent versions of Oracle throughout the 80s and 90s propelled the sector by leaps and bounds and laid the foundation for modern data management.

Oracle’s v3, for instance, introduced data distribution and scalability, two crucial introductions that were key to meeting global usage. The same update also rewrote Oracle’s code in the C programming language, allowing it to be utilized with other operating systems.

Features such as client and server-side computing, distributed database systems, online backup and recovery, and PL/SQL execution from compiled programs (such as C) would follow in the later stages of the decade. This took place at a time when home computers were becoming more accessible, slowly forming a market that’d explode in the upcoming years.

As more households welcomed PCs across the developed world, the idea of connecting to a network of other computers had already taken root in this newly emerging culture of computer enthusiasts. Sending electronic mail in mere seconds was groundbreaking for a while, but visionaries saw more than an information superhighway—they saw a whole virtual world waiting to be uncovered.

Following Oracle v6, a series of innovations would pave the way to the early days of commercial internet. Parallel SQL executions, shared servers, recovery managers, partitioning, native internet protocols, virtual private databases, and more would be introduced with future upgrades as the world prepared to enter a new millennium.

Website hosting, online gaming, videoconferencing, cloud storage, audio and video streaming, and so much more were made commercially available to everyday consumers, shaping the internet we know today. However, as data grew in size and complexity, traditional systems needed help to keep up.

The early 2000s saw the world transition from relational databases to cloud computing, where cloud-based services rapidly began branching out into almost every aspect of online life. This centralized approach generated an unfathomable amount of data and made it easily accessible to various internal and 3rd party service providers, onto popular “big data” solutions such as BigTable, Hadoop, Spark, MongoDB, etc. Soon, algorithms and tools would be built to harness and process said data, allowing them to be sold to third parties such as marketers, researchers, and even government organizations, as we have already highlighted the data privacy and data walled-gardens issues as one of our key challenges to solve.

Today, the mere ownership of basic devices such as VR/AR devices, cars (self-driving or otherwise), and TVs can result in the frequent generation of data, let alone the proactive usage of online services. The demand for data is ever-growing, and its implications for the infrastructure that makes the modern web possible raise several questions on both ethical and practical levels.

‍

Other Challenges and Limitations of Current Data Infrastructures

Current data infrastructures need to improve in scalability, privacy, and compliance. Handling exponential data growth strains traditional systems, while privacy breaches expose vulnerabilities. According to Harvard Business Review, there was a 20% increase in data breaches from 2022 to 2023 and a 100% increase in the global number of victims in the same timeframe. Data breaches can also be quite expensive, with the average cost for a company reaching an all-time high of $4.45 million in 2023, according to Statista.

Navigating complex regulations like GDPR poses hurdles in data sovereignty. Ensuring compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA regulations is challenging due to infrastructure limitations. Organizations must address scalability, privacy, and compliance issues with innovative solutions and strategic data management approaches to stay competitive. True data sovereignty needs fully automated and decentralized data infrastructure, where secure data access & SLA's can be done trustlessly via smart contracts and governance innovations as Cere has been building.

‍

Rise of Decentralized Data Infrastructures

These regulations, as daunting as they may be, do not apply to decentralized solutions on account of their distributed and open nature. In the mid-to-late 2010s, numerous projects sprung up to tackle this sector and bring such decentralized systems to the world, including the likes of Filecoin, IOTA, Theta, Arweave, and Helium.

However, as commendable as they were for their efforts, they still needed to catch up in a few key areas, and while some have grown over the years, they have ultimately failed to breach the mainstream and tangibly change the industry. Some aren’t priced competitively enough, others aren’t entirely permissionless, some handle privacy questionably, and most just don’t work well enough to stand out and outcompete.

More importantly, none of these attempts deployed local data infrastructure for real-time fast data processing, which has proven to be key in offering cutting-edge performance for attractive prices. Consequently, having taken alternate approaches, such projects have missed out on key opportunities such as being able to cater to growing markets like AI.

If there were ever a time when decentralized infrastructure could show its true potential, it would be now.

‍

Why Cere Network?

Cere Network stands out with its fully decentralized data solutions. Cere Protocol and decentralized data clusters powered by it and CERE token are designed from the ground-up to handle full data automation needs of autonomous AI agents securely operating directly on user data in real-time. We will soon publish an article on how we are “bringing intelligence into data at the edge to ensure efficient real-time insights, improving data security and simplifying AI agent orchestration, making data automation direct, secure, and effective.

Each data clusters is an adaptive and self-organizing group of nodes that can focus on serving a range of data operations on both global and regional levels in real-time. This decoupling of the protocol from the actual infrastructure operations is not only much more decentralized but will likely result in a much higher degree of worldwide adoption (we’ll touch on this more soon).

Together with a large set of SDK, utilities, the first data cluster running on the Cere protocol code-named Dragon1, is already on the level of traditional service providers in terms of performance and utility, already giving early developers a much needed alternative to AWS Cloudfront (for content serving) and AWS RDS (for decentralized data storage), we’ll be highlighting these usecases, tech stack and how-to’s very soon as Dragon1 will be opening to public beta in the coming data (join a waiting list today).

By integrating cutting-edge technology with user-friendly tooling and SDKs, Cere empowers businesses and individuals to unlock the full potential of their data. With both broad and specialized SDKs, developers are given the tools and freedom they need to build a wide range of applications on Cere.

Unlike many other protocols, our tools and utilitities already allow user data to be individually segmented and encrypted by default (with no PII) for the utmost protection, privacy and data-interoperability (stay tuned for a showcase coming soon). We believe that all data should be decentralized unequivocally, and encryption plays a substantial role in that regard. By choosing Cere, companies and projects building on our network and utilizing its competitively-priced data storage/operations/computation can already get a headstart on secure and sovereign data computation needs for the earn of web3 and AI that’s already here and in the same vein, users don’t have to trust in open-source programs built on Cere Network, as they can verify for themselves how their data is handled.

‍

Use Cases and Impact

Across industries, organizations are embracing Cere Network to revolutionize their data management practices. From healthcare to finance, Cere's decentralized approach offers unparalleled security, efficiency, and flexibility. By putting data ownership back in the hands of users, Cere is reshaping the future of data management and driving change on a global scale.

To showcase Cere’s potential, we launched CerePlay to demonstrate our network's capabilities to game developers. This included a wide range of features, from Web3 rewards to secondary marketplaces and anything in between, meeting all the requirements for GameFi/P2E protocols to establish themselves on Cere and cater to a spectrum of gamers.

What followed were the likes of DaVinci, a music platform built on Cere using its SDK. Not only does DaVinci offer music streaming, but it also allows artists to reach out to their fans and interact with them in a host of different ways, including offering collectibles, gamification, and exclusive access.

But arguably one of Cere’s most notable use cases is in AICG. With its edge computing and real-time data processing, AI protocols built on Cere deliver faster results at a cheaper cost, positioning them far more favorably than traditional AI applications. With AI-based products and services seeing a rise in costs, users will be very selective with their subscriptions—and Cere is arguably the best infrastructure to help such companies capture new audiences by reducing costs and increasing performance.

‍

Conclusion

The evolution of data systems has been a journey of innovation and adaptation. As Cere Network has already been working hard for years anticipating and innovating for the new era of data that’s already here.

Digital infrastructure is inarguably global public infrastructure, the importance of which cannot be overstated. By joining Cere Network, be it as a DAO member, a node operator, or a developer, people can not only contribute to this vital digital railway but also experience the true spirit of the internet and, ultimately, benefit from what that spirit has manifested into since its inception.